Saturday, December 6, 2008

Dixie Chicks Sued for Defamation by Father of "West Memphis Three Murder Victim"

Here is another .. not my "normal" blogging style but after reading this .. My jaw hit the ground.. what a shame .. these were kids!

Dixie Chicks front woman Natalie Maines has put the band in hot water again. The band is being sued for defamation by a man whose 8-year-old stepson was killed in 1993 because Maines had implicated that he had something to do with his son's murder.

Maines is no stranger to the trouble her statements bring her, having single-handedly brought about a nationwide ban of the Dixie Chicks after her statements about President Bush in the U.K. In this situation, Maines appeared at a rally last December in Little Rock, Arkansas benefiting the three men convicted of the murder of 8-year-old Steve Branch and two other boys.

The three men, known as the "West Memphis Three" were convicted of killing the boys in 1994 as teenagers. Maines told the crowd gathered in Little Rock that there was new DNA evidence gathered from the crime scene which implicated Steve's stepfather, Terry Hobbs, and that his behavior following the boys' deaths was unusual. Maines made similar statements in a letter she posted on the Dixie Chicks website in November of last year.

According to E! Online, Hobbs is suing the band for defamation, libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress by outrageous conduct and false-light invasion of privacy. He claims that the Chicks caused him embarrassment, humiliation, "severe" psychological and emotional trauma, loss of income and injury to his reputation.

In May 1993, three 8-year-old boys were found brutally murdered in a drainage ditch in West Memphis, Arkansas. According to Tru TV, "by the next day, police were questioning their first suspect, Damien Echols." A few weeks later, Jessie Misskelley, an acquaintance of Echols, confessed to the murders, implicating Echols and another friend, Jason Baldwin. The three teenagers were soon arrested and charged with the murders of the three boys.

All three of the teenagers were found guilty. 17-year-old Jessie Misskelley was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. 16-year-old Jason Baldwin was sentenced to life imprisonment, as well as an extra forty years. 18-year-old Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection.